10 BULLETIN 179, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
- Bassett, Cumberland, Marianna, Miner, Newman, Weaver, and Wild 
Goose. : : 
Only a few years later Eliphas Cope (14, p. 8) published at New 
Lisbon, now simply Lisbon, in eastern Ohio, a pamphlet of 45 pages 
devoted entirely to plums, but here again the native varieties are 
dismissed with a single paragraph: . 
The native plums should not be planted but sparingly, only when they have been 
tried and given satisfaction. North of 40° latitude we question if they will give sat- 
isfaction or remuneration for labor. 
The author of this statement must have been quite unfamiliar with 
the development and utilization of the native species taking place 
at that time in the States of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, 
where they were rapidly becoming of great importance. 
The brief discussions of the native species by the authors quoted 
above show that after two centuries of occupation by Europeans the 
native species held a relatively very unimportant place.in American 
pomology. In 1850, a few years earlier and later, respectively, 
than the publications of Barry and Downing, the center of population 
in the United States was near Parkersburg, W.Va. The people of 
the Southern States were little engaged in fruit raising, and the 
industry was therefore mainly confined to the States east of the Great 
Lakes and north of the Ohio and Potomac Rivers, a region in the greater 
part of which the varieties of domestica and insititia origin are grown 
with success. As the population of the country increased and spread 
westward beyond the region in which European varieties of plums 
were successfully grown, attention began to be directed more and 
more toward the utilization of native species, and this interest was 
accelerated by reason of the ravages of the curculio and the belief 
of many people that native plums were less affected by the insect. 
The first efforts at plum culture, however, even in the States of 
Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa were mainly with those varieties of 
the Old World species that had been known in the Eastern States. 
Failing with these, the attention of fruit growers was of necessity 
turned to the native varieties, and a few were quite optimistic as to the 
outcome. Among these was J. S. Stickney (69), of Wauwatosa, Wis., 
who, in an address before the Iowa Horticultural Society in 1877, said: 
I am dreaming that among these [native plums] there is something valuable; their 
endurance, productiveness, and perfect hardiness should and must be made useful to 
us, and we have no right to rest or flag in our efforts until we have an orchard of native 
plums that shall command in market two to four dollars per bushel, and yield crops 
as abundant and frequent as the wild ones in our thickets now do. About the pos- 
sibility of this there is very little doubt * * *. . 
A little later D. B. Wier, a prominent horticulturist at Lacon, IL., 
grew all the native varieties he could secure, while in Iowa, J. L. 
Budd, Capt. Watrous, and others very early recognized the value of 
